


it's my wife and it's my life

by freloux



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Sex, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 08:23:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6462910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freloux/pseuds/freloux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Is it like...an addiction?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's my wife and it's my life

Sometimes they take off with a plan in mind. More often than not, though, it's aimless wandering. Clara will ask where they're going and he'll respond with a coy sort of smile. "Let's find out." The Doctor stands at the console, shoulder-width apart. Balanced. He throws the lever and the light start to flicker. He changes when he's there: he goes from a creature at the seams to someone in some semblance of command and control. She sometimes wants to put her hands on him when he does this, so she can get a feel of all that intensity for herself. The way he seems, for the briefest moment, like a person who could conquer anything. Jaw clenched. Those hits of adrenaline when the ship starts moving and they land and start running. That's when he comes to life, when he's rushing headlong into the next thing.

But at the moment she gets it vicariously. Racing off across the galaxy in search of the Wow! signal. (Turns out it was just an an alien who left his blinker on by accident.). Running afoul of lizard beings, rock monsters, rock concerts - sometimes all at the same time. Goin' from this land here to that, just like they say on the old vinyl records he puts on every so often in between adventures.

He treats her differently when they're running together: as a sidekick, almost an equal. Actually asking her opinion on what's going on. (Of course, he usually ends up doing the opposite, but it's the thought that counts, right?) Then when they're back onboard, everything resets into a clinical sort of calm. It's like he doesn't know how to handle her. As if Insert Adventure Here is easy but being in the same room as her is beyond his abilities.

***

Something with too many mouths and not enough legs slithers towards them. For a split second, the Doctor doesn't back down, almost welcoming its approach. Clara screams at him, then, and he activates the whatever. (He hadn't really bothered to explain this particular device to her, but then, when does he ever?) And it's gone, disintegrated like it - like his brief flirtation with the next regeneration - had never happened. Odd piles of goo are leftover as they trudge back towards the TARDIS, but otherwise they're by themselves in an an empty barracks that echoes with their footsteps and his excited comments. He's still talking about it, as if the story will bring it back and he'll get the chance to play the hero all over again. As if that's all he needs.

***

Post-adventure they content themselves with playing a riveting board game. The box is very old and is missing half its directions and most of its pieces, but evidently he still remembers how to play. They spread it out on the floor and hunch over the board, knees not quite touching.

As the game proceeds, Clara decides to try something. A psychic knock at the Doctor's mental door. An imaginary opening, welcoming her in. No change in his expression - he's still focused on the game. It's a conversation between the two of them that's happening in another realm. She walks down imagined hallways with many, many closed doors, and he walks with her, opening them slowly.

There are some things that she's curious about. Why he wants to get that close to death. Why he runs. The Doctor is very, very clever though. For awhile he manages to distract her with shiny memories of other times they've had together. Then Clara ducks, dodges, and feels like she's got one door just about pried open - he's about to tell her the answer - when it abruptly slams shut. The connection is lost. He puts down his piece and leaves the room, the swish of his coat scattering the game in his wake.

***

She wants to poke him until he'll vent, until he'll open up to her. But he's as knowledgeable as he is stubborn. He's good at pretending. An excuse here, a mumbled response there. Putting up a brave front. Nothing's wrong, Clara, I just need some time alone, is all. Every time they're back on board, he hides, retreats to somewhere in the depths of the TARDIS, deeper into himself. He needs so much time alone that it's beginning to feel like he's avoiding her. This unhealthy cycle until it's almost like she's travelling with a stranger.

They go back to playing their little board game together. It seems like that's one of the only things he'll allow himself to share with her. Their plastic pieces around the board, never exactly side by side - his is always just a few spaces ahead. Moving towards an ill-defined goal.

"So you're just content to be an isolated god in his ship, are you, then?" Clara asks point-blank in the middle of the game. She's tired of being forced to treat him with kid gloves.

His hand, fingers tight around his tiny plastic marker, hovers mid-thought over the board. "You're part of this too, you know," he returns. And for once, Clara doesn't know what to say.

He's right, though. Clara is not immune to this. She's been escaping reality with him, over and over, so much so that she's got a new reality now where she's more of a person - more herself - when she's with him. The Doctor has shown her that there is so much more to be: that it's possible to just lose yourself in the adventure of it all. Not that nothing else matters, but that forgetting is possible. That the immediacy is gone when you're running for your life.

So perhaps she's beginning to understand where he's coming from.

***

It comes down to the two of them, then. He's still lacking in the social graces - Clara his tenuous hold on reality. He's too absorbed in the thrill of the thing to care. (On one of their recent trips, he may or may not have insulted the religious order of an entire minor star system. Occupational hazard.)

But there are still some things that he just doesn't do. Pulling her in, pushing her away. Both of them wanting her to stay and unsure how to say it. Like he's decided to make himself numb because running from one planet to the next is easier than facing this. Facing her. As though human emotions are just so complicated that he's decided that they're beneath him.

***

She's trying to help him. They're trapped in a glassy otherworld, in a corridor with prisms and mirrors all around them. Refracted rainbows above and below. He's jimmying the lock on the door in an attempt to sonic it away. "You can't help - I don't need - I can fix this." Muttering more to himself than to her. The Doctor presses up against the door, continuing to talk to himself. His own hunched image is reflected back to him as he works.

He can run and run, but at some point he'll still be confronted with himself.

***

So eventually he gets to talking. He still needs time to be alone, but sometimes when they're together he starts ruminating. Unspooling whatever it is he's been thinking about when he's off by himself. He seems so surprised and grateful when she actually listens to him. In actuality, though, Clara's just holding her breath. She doesn't want him to retreat from her, not when they've gotten this far.

"Do you ever wish you were someone else?" he asks her. He's bent over an appliance and silently holds out his hand every so often so that she can hand him the next part of the device that he needs. Showing her how close he wants to be without coming out and saying it. He may be protective of his ship - he'd never let her do this - but oh, how nice to do a thing together.

"I have been," Clara replies. "And so have you. But if you were someone else right now, then you wouldn't be here with me."

There's a ghost of a smile on his face. "Well, you put up a wall and never let them see you falter. They say I'm a cosmic terror, so that's what I became."

Running, then. Like the running will take him away from who he is - will answer, once an for all, whether or not he's a good man. Or perhaps he's running from the question itself. All those walls he talked about. For her, though, they're slowly crumbling.

***

At the ready. At the console. Time to take them off to wherever. Time for the next hit of adrenaline.

She stands near him. A rare moment when they're actually in the same room. Mentally leaving a note on his door. Him, reading it. Considering. Letting her back in. Flickering images of his home, his past. A theoretical shrug. She pauses him, forces him to replay the tape. A metaphorical sigh. She wanders the corridors of his mind with light and carefully seeking footsteps, hoping she can eventually plumb the pathways of his hearts.

She doesn't like feeling so far from him, so she hugs him close. He doesn't hug her back. Some gestures are so simple that he just can't reciprocate. Clara only comes up to about his chest. She can hear his heartbeats: a sure and ancient pulse beneath the surface of his skin. The rest of him is far off above her, his mind in this tower she still can't quite reach. His eyes are so sad when she looks up at him.

This body he's given himself. A body that's carried so much pain. Maybe she can take some of it as her own and adopt it, so he doesn't have to carry it all. Clara keeps on hugging him. And here is where she feels a tiny voice - his voice - insisting in her mind that he doesn't matter, that it's ok to just have this, that the running is all there can be.

She returns with her own mental insistence until it becomes a thing she says out loud. "You matter. That is, to me."

Clara has been by his side through all the hard choices. Whatever it takes, whatever is necessary. She knows that he's not only addicted to the running but the way it feels: that he's important, that he can cause all these ripples through time. And through her own shattered self and the way she's been tugged along beside him, she's started to feel important, too.

What she's best at, though, is being his calming influence, and this is one way for her to exercise it. She's gentle when she helps him out of his clothes, knowing that she's taking away all the layers of what he presents to her. He looks so different without his armour. Scared. Smaller, even. Here, though, they can be small and scared together.

He watches her handle him. Migrating her hand upward, squeezing gently, thumb at the tip until his swollen cockhead is revealed. She's become so skilled at uncovering his vulnerabilities. Clara could do this forever, feel him burning in her hands with his own singular warmth that is not quite human. But she wants - needs - to be closer to him. He seems a bit unable to talk at the moment so she soothes him with psychic instructions. How to undress her, how to touch her.

Clara sinks gradually downwards onto him. It feels like that same adrenaline rush she gets from travelling with him, when time itself somehow slows down and expands all at once around them. Reality itself is melting until the only thing that's important is the two of them. Just the way it's always been. The way it should be. Clara adjusts herself, a shift in position that makes her weight settle heavily onto his cock. His hands are awkwardly on her hips, rocking her. They move together and speed seems to approach infinity, a skewing of time and space.

Later, once their heartbeats have settled down to normal, Clara feels his psychic hello. Reaching out, brushing along the surface of her mind. A gentle question. Her own tender confirmation. His touch recedes, leaving behind an echo of relief.


End file.
